William Corrin

In a society where whites are the dominant race, some scholars have theorized that multiracial individuals who are part-white may be more advantaged than those who are members of other racial minority groups.

In a study reported in a recent IPR working paper, sociology graduate student William J. Corrin and Thomas D. Cook (IPR-Sociology) tested this claim empirically for the first time. Using survey data and objective measures on more than 1,600 students in grades 5 through 11, the researchers describe and explain differences in the quality of social contexts among four racial groups: monoracial blacks, monoracial whites, racially mixed individuals with some white heritage, and racially mixed individuals with no white heritage.

When each context‹family, peers, school, and neighborhood‹was rated for attributes that have been demonstrated to promote positive development, Corrin and Cook found that white youth are the most contextually advantaged and black youth the least. Multiracial non-white young people live in contexts similar to their black peers, while part-white multiracial youth live in contexts that fall between those of blacks and whites in terms of quality. Part-white multiracial youth did enjoy one particularly strong advantage: They were the most comfortable of all the groups in any setting that was racially diverse, whether it was neighborhood, school, or peer group.

This advantage that part-white young people enjoy over their peers from the other three groups is best explained not by biological or socioeconomic factors, the authors suggest, but by the opportunity for multicultural encounters in their families and neighborhoods. These interactions equip these youth with boundary-spanning skills that enable them "to navigate the dominant white world more easily" than is possible for blacks and non-white multiracial individuals.

"Spanning Racial Boundaries: Multiracial Adolescents and Their Families, Peers, Schools, and Neighborhoods," may be ordered from IPR's publications department for $5.00.